The mystery of the X-37B

"So heads up Earthlings! The future is now. Pay attention. Exciting times are ahead. If we can keep from blowing ourselves up, the ride tomorrow will be a heck of a lot different (and better) than the ride yesterday."  

Oh my - Americans do enjoy a mystery. And especially one which can be woven into a conspiracy theory. One of the best ones I have seen as late, revolves around the X-37B unmanned space plane. The one which is launched, stays in orbit just short of forever, and then comes back to Earth. Once back, it keeps its mouth shut about what it was doing up there. And now, it is going up again in September for...???

Poking around on the internet to find some theories on this plane, I found quite a bit which were just short of fighting aliens. Some of them actually made some sense. One of them was to jam pack this space plane with the most state of the art listening and viewing technology to date. It would be better than any of our Keyhole satellites. Plus, it is very maneuverable. Whereas even our best satellites in a geosynchronous orbit have some limitations. This plane has fewer of them. It has the mobility to "get in very snugly", without being noticed or held to a satellite schedule.

There were some others theories, but they were way "out there" (no pun intended). However, the one which I think is the most plausible, is the hunter/killer plan. It is true we have had ASAT (anti-satellite technology) for years in some of our rockets. But this type of hunter/killer technology based on a space plane would be far more lethal. No running and no hiding from this guy. Can you imagine taking our the comm sats and/or the GPS sats of an adversary during a conflict? Quite an advantage, I would say.

I will mention this however. Get used to it. Space is about to change for us. For everyone. How so? Many, many more unmanned missions are planned. You think driver-less cars are going to be a splash? Wait until you see the progression of pilot-less space craft (hello, Elan Musk!). 

Where are the jobs of the future going to be? Pay attention to the details, and you will see them all around us. Not to change the subject, but just today I saw on the internet a pocket sized projector you could use with your cell phone, tablet, PC, or whatever. It will play your favorite movie or streaming show, and project it in HD on any surface which can pass for a screen. And you can also blue tooth your sound for movie theater type effects. That is just the start of the next revolution in media and entertainment. Hang on.

One final thing on the next mission of the X-37B. It is rumored it will be testing out a new ion-drive engine. If that is successful, and if we can perfect the ion-drive, it will not take us anywhere close to light speed, but it will get us places a heck of lot faster with less fuel than we do now. Get ready Mars!

So heads up Earthlings. The future is now. Pay attention. Exciting times are ahead. If we can keep from blowing ourselves up, the ride tomorrow will be a heck of a lot different (and better) than the ride yesterday.